Process for making a shirt from a tubular fabric blank



M, 196"? KOHEI YAMAMURA 3,293,033

PROCESS FOR MAKING A SHIRT FROM A TUBULAR FABRIC BLANK Filed July 19, 1965' 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Jan. 17, 1967 KOHEI MUR 3,298,033

PROCESS FOR MAKING A SHIRT FROM A TUBULAR FABRIC BLANK Filed July 19, 1965 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 United States Patent M 3,298,033 PROCESS FOR MAKING A SHIRT FROM A TUBULAR FABRIC BLANK Kohei Yamamura, 12 2-chome Kamezawa-cho, Tokyo, Japan Filed July 19, 1965, Ser. No. 472,822 1 Claim. (Cl. 2-113) The present invention relates to a process for tailoring a shirt from a tubular blank of fabric and more particularly from a tubular blank of knitted material and constitutes a continuation-in-part application of Us. copending application Ser. No. 116,717, now Patent No. 3,195,147. In said application, the nape portion of the shirt is formed by extending the upper portions of the right and left sleeves and sewing together both of the extended sleeve portions. However such a process is not free from being somewhat troublesome in respect of cutting and sewing. Thus, this invention aims to facilitate the cutting and sewing of shirts by providing a method which allows the upper edge of the body portion of a shirt to form the line of the neck portion without extending the upper portions of the sleeves to such an extent as to form the nape or rear neck portion to which the rear neck line belongs.

The features of this invention will more fully be ap parent from the following description of an embodiment of this invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a plan view illustrating now to cut a tubular blank of fabric in order to make a shirt;

FIG. 2 is a front view of the piece of fabric cut and folded to form the body portion of the shirt;

FIGS. 3 and 4 are expansion plans showing the pieces of material from which the right and left sleeves are formed respectively;

FIG. 5 is an oblique view of the piece of material shown in FIG. 3 when sewn to form the left sleeve;

FIG. 6 is an oblique view of the piece of material shown in FIG. 4 when sewn to form the right sleeve; and

FIG. 7 is a front view showing the finished shirt.

FIG. 1 shows how to cut a tubular blank of knitted material and the method of cutting varies in dimensional details such as the blank width and cutting gradients according to the kind of an intended product. However, the gist of partition is common to every intended product. First, a tubular blank of knitted fabric 1 of a specified length is folded in such a way that the front half portion is in flat overlap with the rear half portion. The tubular material is then cut along a symmetrical V-like curve 2-2"2' consisting of two convexly opposed lines (as indicated at 17), which converges inwardly from substantially medial points 2 and 2' on both side edges of the folded material 1 to the apex 2" on the longitudinal center line aa. Thus, the tubular material blank is divided into two tubular pieces 3 and 4, from which the body and sleeves of the shirt will be formed respectively. A portion 16 of the tubular piece 3 is cut out along line 16 to provide a neck opening. The piece of material 3, to form the garment body, is folded symmetrically along the longitudinal line aa, which involves the apex 2", so that the front and rear halves of the fabric piece 3 thus doubled constitute the body portion of the shirt as shown in FIG. 2. The piece of material 4 to form the sleeves is further out on both sides along lines 55' and 5- (5" existing on the rear side) and lines 6-6' and 6-6" (6" being on the rear side) so as to be tapered gradually and symmetrically in :respect of the longitudinal line aa. The tapered pieces, indicated at 7 and 8 in FIGS. 3 and 4 respectively, serve to form the right and left sleeves. The triangular fabric pieces 9 and 9 cut away from the material piece 4 will be put to sep- 3,298,033 Patented Jan. 17, 1967 arate use. Thus, the tapered pieces of material 7 and 8 will form symmetrical sleeves.

The two sleeve material pieces 7 and 8 shown in FIGS. 3 and 4 are then folded along the longitudinal center lines B-B' and B- respectively, and each of the pairs of mating edges 10 and 11 are sewn together as indicated by lines 12 and 13 in FIGS. 5 and 6 respectively. Then, inner end 18" is tapered so that the length of the curved edges is reduced by approximately one-half the width of the neck opening whereby the inner ends of the sleeves will not extend to form the nape portion of the garment with curved edges 18 and 18 thus being made to conform to upper side edges 17 and 17' of the body 3, as clearly shown in FIGURE 7. The thus formed sleeves 7 and 8 have open curved edges 18 and 18' and unseamed cuff edges 21 and 21 respectively.

As shown in FIGS. 2 and 7, the shirt body 3 is folded along the longitudinal lines including the apices 2", the lines thus forming both side edges of the garment body 3 and dividing the body into the front and rear bodies 14 and 15. The front body 14 has its top portion cut off in a semicircular or triangular form as indicated at 16 in FIG. 1, so that the edge 16' forms a front neckline.

The upper sides edges 17 and 17' of the body 3 thus prepared and the curved edges 18 and 18 of the sleeves 7 and 8 are sewn together at 22 and 22' respectively. Consequently, a shirt proper of which the rear edge 19 of the neck portion belongs to the body 3 is formed. All the component parts of the garment thus sewn together are further fitted suitably with cuffs 20 and 20' at the cuff ends 21 and 21' into a finished shirt.

It will be apparent from the foregoing description that the present invention facilitates the production of shirts with no waste of material and a heightened production efliciency, since the body and sleeves of a shirt embody ing the present invention are formed by cutting a tubular blank of material along a symmetrical V-like curve and therefore can be sewn together in such a way that the curved edges of the sleeves are attached to the upper side edges of the garment body.

What I claim is:

A process of making a shirt having sleeves from a flatly folded tubular fab-ric blank comprising the following steps: cuttings said blank in two pieces transversely to define a V-curve at the mid-portion of said blank, the apex of which lies along the longitudinal center line of said folded tubular blank and of which the two constituent curved lines are of equal length and convexly opposed to each other, thereby forming a tubular body and sleeve blanks, said sleeve blank, thus cut, having one edge defined by ascending concavely intersecting lines and said body blank, thus cut, having one edge defined by descending convexly curved intersecting lines folding said body blank along said longitudinal center line to provide the front and rear portions of said shirt body, said portions thereby having mating arcuate upper edges, cutting a central portion from one of said thus formed upper edges to provide a concave neck opening, cutting said sleeve blank along two oblique lines extending from the nonintersecting ends of said ascending lines away from said intersection and toward said longitudinal center line thereby forming two tapered sleeve pieces, folding each of said tapered sleeve pieces along their respective longitudinal center lines and sewing the obliquely cut edges together to form sleeves having concavely curved inner end edges, tapering the concavely curved edges of said sleeves whereby the lengths of said concavely curved edges are reduced by approximately one-half the width of said concave body neck opening, sewing the concavely curved edges of said sleeves to the arcuate upper edges of said body so that the inner ends of said sleeves terminate at the neck open- 1 3 4 'ing of said body, and sewing cuffs to said sleeves to form 2,575,700 11/1951 Artzt 2113 X Said shirt. 2 ,820,224 1/1958 Potteiger 2-113 3,195,147 7/1965 Yarnamura 2243 References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS I 5 JORDAN FRANKLIN, Primary Examiner.

1 3 1 12/1918 Huels R. I. SCANLAN, JR., Assistant Examiner. 

